education reform in the nation's capital

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Month: July 2019

The headline is not actually fair. There are lots of fascinating statistics contained in the 2019 Annual Report of the DC Public Charter School Board. In fact, what you will immediately notice if you review this document is how many numbers are included in its pages. For example:

47.3% of public school students attend a public charter school. Down from 47.6% the previous year

20,717 students are attending a top performing, or Tier 1, public charter school. The number of DC students attending a top-ranked public charter school increased for the fourth year.

84.3% of PK – 12 students expressed satisfaction with their schools by choosing to return for the next school year.

Other noticeable information included is the fact that the board conducted 28 Qualitative Site Reviews in the past year and the names of the charters that were visited are listed. Moreover, the student re-enrollment rate continues to climb year after year with the proportion reaching 84.3 percent for the 2017 to 2018 term. Another excellent indicator is that the out-of-school suspension rates and expulsion rates show a steady decline when looked at over the last six years.

However, here’s the finding that I would like to focus on today. The mid-year withdrawal rate for students in charters is listed at 5.2 percent, although the manner of calculating this number has recently changed. For citywide schools this percentage is 6.2 percent for the recently completed school year. The mid-year entry rate for charters is only 1.2 percent, which compares to a 5.0 percentage citywide. In other words, significantly less students are enrolling in charters throughout the school year.

This picture could be due to a number of factors. The reality that many charters do not by policy back fill slots throughout the term, as I wrote about the other day, is certainly a contributing cause. Another reason for the low mid-year entry rate is that charters do not receive additional revenue if more students sign up during a term. The amount of money that a charter receives to educate students and pay for a facility is fixed by the student count that occurs in early October. Although many people have proposed revisions to this system, nothing has been done to resolve this issue.

There also is most likely a bias against bringing in kids who have not been in the school from the start of a year. When the future existence of these schools is based upon high stakes testing, there is not much of an incentive to go after filling empty seats.

However, the low mid-year entry rate strikes me as wrong. We know that charters offer a superior product to the traditional schools. Here is another statistic included in the PCSB’s Annual Report: proficiency rates for 2018 in English and math as measured by students scoring a four or above on the PARCC assessment have increased from the previous year in almost all subgroups.

Now is the time to figure out as a charter school community how to change our rules and financial consequences to encourage more students to enroll in our facilities mid-year.

I received a telephone call last evening from an individual who is an exceptionally prominent figure in the national charter school movement. He explained to me in an exasperated tone that in an extremely pro-charter locality the teachers’ union has figured out how to infiltrate the zoning board so that property cannot be approved for use by these alternative schools.

I’m frankly not surprised. The singular focus on charters by teachers’ unions has nothing to do, of course, with the future success of children. It is all about protecting the status quo of adults. I cannot conceive of anything more tragic.

We have observed this identical scenario play out in D.C. The teachers’ unions fought as hard as they could against the Opportunity Scholarship Program, the plan that became federal law in 2004 that provides private school tuition to kids living in poverty. In 2009, Joseph E. Robert Jr., faced no choice but to terminate his Washington Scholarship Fund from administering the OSP due to the Obama Administration’s move to close it out. Fortunately, due to the fierce persistence of many people, especially former United States House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner and former Senator Joe Lieberman, it continues in a stronger fashion today under the leadership of Serving Our Children.

More recently, we have seen unions try and takeover Paul PCS, Cesar Chavez PCS’s middle school Bruce campus, and now Munde Verde PCS. The response to each of these actions has got to be the same. We cannot allow unions to invade our schools. We must protect them at all cost. The current state of public education in our city cannot continue. The academic achievement gap between the affluent and poor is growing, not shrinking. As measured by the proficiency rate for reading and math on the 2018 PARCC standardized test, it now stands at about 64 points.

Here in the nation’s capital we are 23 years into public school reform and for the first time in our history some charters are seeing students reach identical levels of preparedness for college no matter their particular zip code. But the numbers of these kids are still way too small. Tens of thousands of young people still lack a quality seat. We still have a tremendous way to go.

This is why I hope that our charter school leaders and teachers have been able to get some relaxation time this summer. The challenge to improve our schools is tough, and long, and filled with those such as members of the teachers’ unions that would like nothing more than to see us fail.

So we will be brave in this fight. It is the only right thing to do. We are standing up for our children for one reason only. When people look back in history at this period in our society, there can be no option of them coming to the conclusion that we simply gave up.

I was ready to take another shot at the PCSB regarding its overreach. Then I reviewed once again the board’s recommendations. Here is the first one:

“The school will actively consider admitting students in grades 10, 11, and 12, engaging its faculty, board, parents, and students in the decision. The school will report the results of this decision to DC PCSB by March 1, 2020.”

What? The charter does not back fill students in grades 10, 11, and 12? Isn’t it running a high school and came before the board because it wants to create another one? I know the upper school ranks as Tier 1 on the PCSB’s Performance Management Framework, however is it possible that one reason it is achieving at this high level is because it does not take in students after the freshman year?

As part of the escalating bruising political battle about the value of charter schools, the alternative sector consistently advances the argument that these are public schools just like the neighborhood ones. But if charters are placing severe restrictions upon who can be admitted to these schools then this whole experiment could end up at the same place in history as all of the other failed education reform efforts this country has attempted.

We consistently and ferociously point to the unfairness in the way charters are treated. Supporters assert that they should be given access to closed DCPS facilities because of the public school equity argument. It is used again to make the case for uniform funding. Those of us in the movement are beyond frustrated by the claim that charters are privatizing America’s educational system.

We despair deeply over the almost 12,000 pupils on the charter school admission wait list.

Then, we discriminate based upon back filling grade levels as to which kids can sit in our classrooms.

Here’s what I recommend. No more pious declarations until the admission requirements for each school in our city is scrubbed for lack of access.

But here there is a problem. The final authority over the decision to back fill is up to an individual school’s board of directors. The PCSB can only try and exert pressure to influence the rules as it is doing with Latin.

I’m afraid this is going to have to change. For charters to be true public schools they must fit the definition. If, as charter advocates, we do not correct this issue then we are practicing the fallacy of the stolen concept. Philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand described the fallacy as “using a concept while denying the validity of its generic roots, i.e., of an earlier concept on which it logically depends.”

Unless charter schools back fill empty slots among its offered grades then it is not by concept a public school.

Last Monday evening, the D.C. Public Charter School Board gave the green light to Washington Latin PCS opening a new campus next term. There had been rumors that the vote was going to go the other way, and two directors, Steve Bumbaugh and Naomi Shelton, the Title 1 contingent of the PCSB, cast ballots against the expansion in a five-to-two ballot. However, the rest of the group was swayed by staff conditions placed on the replication that make a mockery of the term autonomy. See for yourself:

1) The school will actively consider admitting students in grades 10, 11, and 12, engaging its faculty, board, parents, and students in the decision. The school will report the results of this decision to DC PCSB by March 1, 2020.

2) The school will not permit its sibling preference to be used across its two campuses. This change will be memorialized in the school’s charter agreement as follows: If the school chooses to adopt a sibling preference, such preference shall not apply to siblings attending different campuses of the school.

3) The school will update its student discipline policy, reserving out-of-school suspensions for only the most serious situations. An updated draft of the policy, which will include these modifications, will be voted on by the school’s board at its August 2019 meeting to go into effect for the 2019-20 school year.

4) The school will ensure that each faculty member whose job responsibilities include interfacing with students at least 25% of the time will participate in comprehensive training in trauma-informed practices during the 2019-20 school year.

5) The school will add stops or provide separate vans/buses for students living in Wards 5 and 7 whose families request such service, provided there are a minimum of five such students. No fee will be charged to families whose children qualify for free or reduced-price meals.

6) The school will implement the plans outlined in its letter to DC PCSB from June 7, 2019, found at Attachment C, including: a. Targeted recruitment of lower-income students, b. Redesign and test at-risk support strategies, c. Strengthen the RTI (Response to Intervention) Model, d. Hire an At-Risk program manager, and e. Expand the reach of restorative discipline and trauma-informed initiatives.

7) The school will be eligible for charter renewal in school year 2020-21. If the school’s charter is renewed, it will need to negotiate a new charter agreement with DC PCSB. Provided the charter is renewed, should the DC PCSB Board determine, at the time of the renewal decision, that the school has failed to make satisfactory progress in addressing disproportionality in the use of exclusionary discipline, the number of at-risk students served, and/or the performance of historically underperforming subgroups, the new charter agreement shall contain a mission-specific goal or goals to hold the school accountable in the remaining areas of concern.

This is what you do to a open-enrollment public charter school that has been ranked at Tier 1 on the Performance Management Framework for almost its entirety and that serves one of the most, if not the most, diverse student bodies in the city? Absolutely amazing. It is extremely similar to the chains placed around LEARN DC PCS so that it could win the privilege to open in our city.

Now let’s turn to other matters covered the other evening that were far more interesting. First, the session started with an announcement by Chair Rick Cruz that a new board member had been sworn in earlier that day to the PCSB. His name is James Sandman and he has some incredibly impressive credentials. Since 2011, Mr. Sandman has been the president of the Legal Services Corporation, a nonprofit providing legal assistance across the country to low-income individuals. But there is much more to this man. According to the organization’s website:

“He practiced law with Arnold & Porter LLP for 30 years and served as the firm’s managing partner for a decade. He is a past president of the 100,000-member District of Columbia Bar and a former general counsel for the District of Columbia Public Schools.

Sandman is chairman of the boards of the Meyer Foundation and the D.C. Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. He is a member of the District of Columbia Access to Justice Commission, the District of Columbia Bar Pro Bono Committee, the American Law Institute, the Advisory Council of the American Bar Association’s Center for Innovation, and the Pro Bono Institute’s Law Firm Pro Bono Project Advisory Committee. He is a member of the boards of Washington Performing Arts, the College of Saint Rose, Albany Law School, Tahirih Justice Center, and the University of Pennsylvania Law Center on the Future of the Profession.”

This is only a small portion of Mr. Sandman’s biography.

At the start of the gathering Don Soifer and Naomi Rubin DeVeaux received Distinguished Service Awards. It was pointed out that Mr. Soifer held various positions on the charter board for 11 years and in that time never missed a meeting. Ms. DeVeaux was recognized for her work to completely overhaul the manner in which charters are evaluated. Although many accolades were sprinkled on both of these fine individuals by those on the dias, I think they missed the essence of their contributions.

Mr. Soifer demonstrated throughout his tenure how to perfectly play the role of a board member. His fair and detailed questions led schools to reach their own conclusions as to the proper path that they should take for future success. Ms. DeVeaux is about as authentic as it comes. Her comments and response to inquiries were honest, direct, and heartfelt toward the children we are serving.

A highlight for me was hearing public testimony from Alexandra Pardo from TenSquare Consulting. Anytime Ms. Pardo speaks it is a moment to stop what you are doing and pay attention and this occasion was no exception. She addressed the at-risk student bias of the PMF, a subject that has been raised with increasing frequency to the PCSB. Here are her remarks:

“First, I want to recognize PCSBs staff and leadership ongoing willingness to revise the PMF focused on high standards for student outcomes. In recent years, PCSB has analyzed and recognized the increasingly problematic relationship between student at-risk status and school score on the PMF. Over ten years ago, when the PMF was first developed the sector was grossly different. The correlation between economically disadvantaged students and the PMF score was .13 – negligible. To best illustrate the shift in economic concentration of students, I direct you to page 1 – here you can see moving across the horizontal axis the number of schools above the 50th percentile based on economic indicators measured at these times – in 2010 there were only 6 schools serving fewer than 50% economically disadvantaged students. Today there are 35 schools serving at-risk populations at the 50th percentile or below. As you see on page 2 – the correlation between economics and the PMF has risen from 2011 to 2018 from .13 to .42, a three-fold increase. To demonstrate the impact of the at-risk bias, we re-ran the middle school PMF scores for only at risk students in middle schools. In other words, what could PMF scores be for schools with low or high at- risk populations if only those students were factored? What you will see on page 3 is stark – some high performing schools have low at-risk populations. Schools with PMF scores in the 60s and 70s drop by 20 to 30 PMF points if only considering the outcomes of at-risk students. We can only suspect where PMF sores would be if schools at the top of this list served at-risk population more aligned with sector or state averages. While this is not a perfect exercise, it demonstrates how sub-groups performances of students can be overlooked. While the proposals to the PMF are a step towards reducing this bias, and I support these shifts, this is not a solution. Members of the task force have suggested alternatives over the past two years – most recently an equity provision. Economics impacts student outcomes has been rooted in research and most recently adopted by even the College Board in the new SAT hardship metric. I urge the Board to be bold like the College Board. Recognize that the changes before you – while a start – are not a solution and are simply a marginal reduction to the growing bias. I ask that the Board to commit to mechanisms that reduce this bias to below .20, a statistically weak relationship and develop a PMF 2.0 by spring of 2020. Without action, we will find ourselves here again next year moving decimals without resolving for the underlying bias.”

A chart included with her observations show, for example, that Basis Middle PCS in 2018 had an at-risk student population of nine percent and a PMF score of 70.8 percent. However, if only at-risk students were included in the measurement its PMF score would drop to 31.8 percent.

Then something magical happened. The PCSB, in a move that I have been arguing for years, is actually proposing, as part of its revision to its 2019-to-2020 PMF Policy Technical Guide, an incentive for schools that take over failing charters or accept a large population of students from a school that has been closed. The board writes:

“DC PCSB staff is proposing these changes to minimize the impact of school closures on the reliability of the PMF. If a school either takes over operation of a closing school through an asset acquisition or offers a majority of its seats to students coming from closed schools, the school will still receive a PMF scorecard displaying the academic outcomes of its students, but would not earn an overall score or tier for the relevant year.”

As I searched the internet for news stories about charter schools, I came upon an editorial written by the New York Post heavily criticizing Mayor Bill de Blasio’s characterization of these institutions last Friday before a National Education Association presidential forum. Mr. de Blasio, as reported by the PBS News Hour, exclaimed:

“’Too many Democrats have been cozy with the charter schools,’ offering the argument that they siphon money away from traditional public education. ‘I hate the privatizers and I want to stop them,’ he said.”

The Democratic candidates have formed a tightly unified firing squad against these alternative school in a slimy effort to solidify union support. Charter schools, of course, as a rule do not have employees who work under a collective bargaining agreement.

It is an extremely depressing situation that brings me back to a much better time when I first became aware of this movement in the year 1999. I was attending a luncheon at the Cesar Chavez Public Charter High School for Public Policy. I’m not sure if I had yet been invited to join the board of directors but I am confident I was already tutoring a delightful eleventh grader one evening each week.

I had been drawn to charters due to my libertarian political philosophy, and therefore, my ardent support of school choice. So I sat at a gathering where across the room I saw prominent individuals such as Alice Rivlin and Adam Myerson, and I talked about the power of a marketplace in public education. I was stunned by the response I received from those sitting at my table. They actually were opposed to economist Milton Friedman’s theory of school vouchers. They belittled the suggestion that traditional schools were inferior to this new model. In other words, they did not think like me.

Yet, due to the passion and vision of Irasema Salcido, the Chavez founder and school principal, they were instantly drawn to these classrooms that would develop the next generation of leaders of the District of Columbia.

I was a wholly enthusiastic partner in their mission. There was no covert plot to shutter what already existed. We were gathered as part of an intense inspirational drive to fix the problems that had plagued the regular schools for innumerable generations. We would literally do anything we could to help. We were there for the students that others could not, or would not, teach.

So many of us that are involved with our local charters started our involvement exactly the same way. My story is far from unique. We have continued working day and night because of the clear stubborn vision that we can help the children of our community and make the world a better place.

This is exactly what we have done. Kids that would have ended up on the street, in jail, or dead are now graduating from some of the finest colleges in this country. Every year at this time, hundreds of pure miracles cross the stage to proudly receive their high school diplomas.

What is taking place right now regarding the politics around these schools is simply, well, disgusting.

The 2018 to 2019 school year has concluded, and for charter schools in the nation’s capital it is one to forget. These innovative laboratories of public education have been under attack like in the early days of the movement, and the support mechanisms have all but disappeared.

We used to have Jennie Niles as the Deputy Mayor for Education. She naturally favored charters as the founder and former executive director of E.L. Haynes PCS. Now we have Mr. Paul Kihn, who came in with such high expectations but has proved in eight months to be a charter detractor. First, he tried to put pressure on the DC Public Charter School Board to cap the number of schools. Next, he turned his back on AppleTree PCS, one of the country’s preeminent practitioners of early childhood pedagogy, in allowing one of its campuses serving at-risk students to close for a year rather than delay a DCPS modernization project for a few months so that the charter would have a place to operate.

Simultaneously, a teachers’ union associated with the AFT has gained a foothold at Munde Verde PCS, after being defeated at Paul PCS and Cesar Chavez PCS. By reading the printed playbook, unions are on the search for other sites where they can slowly and deceivingly destroy these schools from within.

While all of this is going on, last Friday Friends of Choice in Urban Schools lost two key individuals. Its executive director Irene Holtzman and senior director of government relations Michael Musante have vacated the organization. This, while a FOCUS coordinated charter funding inequity lawsuit is winding its way through the courts and the City Council is considering mandating that charters adhere to open meeting and freedom of information requirements.

I feel like we are witnessing the opening of the film The Exorcist. Everything on the surface appears to going well on a cool autumn day but the winds are blowing cold and there is terror on the horizon.

Meanwhile, as we struggle through year five of the Bowser Administration, not one vacant traditional school building has been offered to a charter school as is required by statute.

The characters in the movie never give up in the face of evil. Are we ready for this challenge? Perhaps a more appropriate question is who is up for the fight? Was the collaboration and the dedication of resources that we just witnessed around the saving of Monument Academy PCS a unique effort inherently related to the school’s unique mission? Or is this something that can be sustained to charge through the seemingly impenetrable barriers that have been erected to block our path forward?

I feel like the years, months, days, hours, and minutes have not been spent in vain. I still believe that those among us who were born less fortunate than ourselves deserve our help. I contend that when society looks retrospectively on this period in history it should not have the option of contending that we closed our eyes and walked away.